Giga Transceiver Workstation Interface Card


GTWIF card

The Giga Transceiver Workstation InterFace card, GTWIF, is a PPC405 based processor card whose primary function is to handle communication between the RTDS power system simulator and the host computer. This is done using Ethernet (10/100baseT) TCP/IP based communications.

GTWIF provides two main improvements over previous WIF:

  • More than double the backplane transfer rate when using the latest version GPC (1.32 and newer). With the increased backplane transfer rate, the GPC network solution has been increased from 54 to 66 nodes per rack. However, the GTWIF can still support the 3PC (including all peripherals) and the IRC version 3 at the previous backplane transfer rate.
  • Now facilitates inter-rack communication which was formerly handled by a separate Inter-Rack Communication (IRC) card. The GTWIF includes six Gigabit Transceiver (GT) optical ports through which inter-rack data is exchanged. The links run at 2GBd over 62.5/125 um multi-mode fiber using a proprietary protocol.

GTWIF provides the following functions:

  • Loading, starting and stopping cases
  • Timestep generation
  • Inter-rack synchronization together with the Global Bus Hub (GBH)
  • Coordination of all backplane transfers during simulation
  • Rack hardware diagnostics
  • All communication with RSCAD (diagnostic and simulation data)

GTWIF Specifications

  • 10/100 Base Tx Ethernet communications
  • VxWorks OS running on a PPC405
  • Global bus for multi-rack simulation
  • Proprietary bus controller for VME backplane
  • 6 2GBd optical ports for Inter-Rack communication
  • 2 2GBd optical ports for future expansion
  • USB accessible from the front panel for system diagnostics and configuration
  • LED displays on the face plate for simulation and configuration information